GovernmentExecutive.com

Mid-level managers have many ideas for improving their agencies. They have been around long enough to understand their organizations but not long enough to have risen to a position of significant power, where they could easily implement those ideas for change.

So they dream of working for a Jack Welch-style leader, someone who would recognize their great ideas, embrace them and use them to transform their agency.

The Jack Welches of the world have long encouraged senior executives in the private and public sectors to mine their workforces for great ideas. But many federal middle managers say they feel like no one's listening to them, that there's no Jack Welch where they work and their ideas are going to suffer a slow, bureaucratic death. If only those in the Senior Executive Service would listen to me, the GS-14 management analyst thinks, this place would be the best agency in government.

Such thoughts are also popular among the young 30-something public administration graduates who have been hired by agencies in the past five years, since the end of federal downsizing. They look up their chains of command only to see calcified baby boomers standing in the way of the Generation X ideas that would sweep away all the red tape and usher in an era of smart, efficient government. They've got ideas, too, but no one is listening.

What mid-level managers and the rising Gen-Xers want is executives who will recognize that there are leaders at all levels in their agencies. There are people with ideas for change who, given some authority, could really make a positive difference in the way their agencies operate. But no one listens.

The despair that rises from the ranks of the government workforce might call out for executives who are better listeners and more willing to delegate authority. But if mid-level feds want to be recognized as leaders, then they must act like leaders too.

Leaders are measured by results. If you have a great idea and it hasn't gone anywhere, then you have to ask yourself why.

What do you need to do to turn that idea into an action that leads to a result? How can you manage up and get the people above you in the chain of command to see the wisdom of your ways? Why should your boss embrace your idea and not the 50 others he has heard this week? Everyone has colleagues with ideas that are really bad. Why isn't yours one of those?

That doesn't mean there aren't great ideas that, unfortunately, do meet a bureaucratic death because of a bad boss. That does happen, and at some agencies it happens too often.

But the complaint from many mid-level feds that they are not heard has the ring of whining. Ideas do become action and results throughout government all the time. If an idea is not going anywhere, don't just blame the boss. Evaluate the idea and the methods used to promote it. That's what a leader does, at any level.

COMMENTS

• IT Manager HUD is right on the money with the observation about appointees. They are "seagull managers" - they fly in, make a lot of noise, crap on everything and then fly away. And unfortunately, they seem to think they know what we do better than we, the doers, know it! But I want to point out something that struck me in the article, a bias that is widespread and loses good ideas for an employer: The author keeps talking about "middle managers" like no one else has any ideas. It may surprise all you big wheels, but some of the little people do have a brain, even if they don't get paid for it. GovExec.com reader Posted August 16, 2006 11:51 AM
• I substantially agree with the other comments here. Most change in large organizations -- including but not limited to the federal government -- is driven from the top down. There is precious little recognition that middle managers have good ideas, and even less interest in hearing them. I once was a middle manager in such a bureaucracy. I was repeatedly admonished to keep my silly ideas for change to myself. Those changes I was able to make were done as a "bureaucratic guerilla fighter," where I made changes that helped our operations without letting the bosses know what I'd done -- or in a couple of brilliant cases, where I convinced some Seriously Senior Manager that the whole thing was their idea. Now I make a nice living taking the great ideas I've collected over the years, combined with the "street smarts" of my clients’ middle managers, and offering them to executive committees in a format they'll listen to. Bob Schilling Posted August 16, 2006 5:38 PM
• Dear Brian, Hogwash!!! Regards, Ken Huffman Posted August 17, 2006 8:00 AM